Speaker 1: Also Media.
Speaker 2: Greetings podcast Into theis. It's me James, a man who
Speaker 2: has commenced his one man war against cutter airlines, who
Speaker 2: detained me against my will for most of the last
Speaker 2: two days in a very small part of a very
Speaker 2: big plane. See there's a there's.
Speaker 3: A You know, airlines from Middle Eastern countries are are
Speaker 3: usually like the best airlines are like Royal Jordanian and
Speaker 3: the Air Immirates. If it's if it's owned by a king,
Speaker 3: it's usually a safe bet. But but cutter airways, that's
Speaker 3: what they say about England breaks that mold, proudly breaks
Speaker 3: that mold. Yeah, yeah, fuck me.
Speaker 2: One of the one of the less pleasant experiences available
Speaker 2: to a human being that doesn't end in death is
Speaker 2: a thirty six hour trip from Kingston to now in California,
Speaker 2: which see I've just enjoyed.
Speaker 3: I always enjoyed those trips back from Air Emirates because
Speaker 3: when you're on the Air Emirates flight, if you ask
Speaker 3: the steward or whatever to you, if you tell him, hey,
Speaker 3: I would like eight shots of vodka and four glasses
Speaker 3: of orange juice, He'll just give it to you, like,
Speaker 3: not even a question, not even a question. And so
Speaker 3: have I vomited on a couple of Air Emirates flights?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Is it always a good time? Probably you don't remember. No, No, yeah,
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 2: I was at the point of frustration where like and
Speaker 2: I'm as an english Man, if if I've become frustrated
Speaker 2: and drunk, then my instinct is to fight everyone or
Speaker 2: throw bottles, and I thought that would probably result in
Speaker 2: further detention, so decided against decided against becoming bladdered. Or
Speaker 2: it could have started singing. I guess that's the other
Speaker 2: option available to me that fits my culture. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: we're not here to talk about things that I like
Speaker 2: to do in my free time, as much as I
Speaker 2: would love that, but we are here to talk about
Speaker 2: things that I have been seeing in my worktime. When
Speaker 2: I was traveling to Kurdistan last couple of weeks. Kurdistan,
Speaker 2: for people who are not familiar, is a big area,
Speaker 2: the area where Kurdish people live, and it spans several countries.
Speaker 2: The areas I went, we're in Iraq and in Syria
Speaker 2: or in that it's not really in I guess Syrian
Speaker 2: regime territory. But if you look on the.
Speaker 3: Mout northeast Syria known as Rojava. The other two parts
Speaker 3: that are generally considered part of Kurdistan are a chunk,
Speaker 3: big chunk of southern Iran and also a big chunk
Speaker 3: of southern Turkey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Java just means west. I think Roja lat
Speaker 2: is east eastern Kurdistan. So yeah, I've spent the last
Speaker 2: several last week and change in that area. And while
Speaker 2: I was there, the Turkish state began and a massive
Speaker 2: drone bombing campaign, which is what we are gathered here
Speaker 2: today to discuss. So for people who are not familiar,
Speaker 2: it's four years almost to this drone bombing campaign started
Speaker 2: almost four years to the day since Turkey's invasion of
Speaker 2: what they call the M four Strip. So that's the
Speaker 2: area around Surakania and tell Abayad, we've talked about that
Speaker 2: before on the Podka, So if you want to know
Speaker 2: more about that, you can go back and listen to it.
Speaker 2: It's the area along the border, one of the areas
Speaker 2: on the border between Turkey and Syria. And as people
Speaker 2: will know, Syria is a country that has had a
Speaker 2: long and terrible civil war, which they've heard about in
Speaker 2: lots of episodes, right, and we're not talking about that today,
Speaker 2: so much as we're talking about the Turkish state's use
Speaker 2: of drones to bomb, what people generally in this country
Speaker 2: will know as for a Java, right, So just to
Speaker 2: give them statistics off the top, this is the fourth
Speaker 2: year in a row of aggression at this time of year, right,
Speaker 2: So there have been two land attacks I think Operation
Speaker 2: Olive Branch and Operation with someone called peace Spring, and
Speaker 2: then two years the last two years there have been
Speaker 2: drone strikes at this time of year, this time of year,
Speaker 2: it seems very hard not to conclude that these are
Speaker 2: attempts to destroy civilian infrastructure and make it very hard
Speaker 2: for people in the cold months of the year. So
Speaker 2: right now, around two million people in north east Syria
Speaker 2: are going to be without power and without water. And
Speaker 2: I experienced some of that when I was there, and
Speaker 2: the places I stayed will run off generators, so you'd
Speaker 2: have like intermittent power, you'd have power from it and
Speaker 2: then they'd put some petrum in the generator and the
Speaker 2: power will go down, or the generator would have a
Speaker 2: little tantrum and the power would go down. But generally
Speaker 2: I had a lot better access to power that some
Speaker 2: people had a lot better access to water. So as
Speaker 2: I was traveling around, I noticed some people didn't have
Speaker 2: access to to like running water, right they can't turn
Speaker 2: on the tap and get water. Obviously that's a massive problem.
Speaker 2: It's something I think like as people are listening to this,
Speaker 2: Israel is also bombing the shit out of Gaza, the
Speaker 2: whole of the Gaza Strip, and the US recently intervened
Speaker 2: to ensure that people there have access to water, and
Speaker 2: they have done very little in the case of protecting
Speaker 2: people in North and East Syria. Right. So across this
Speaker 2: drone campaign, forty eight people have died, and in the
Speaker 2: worst of I guess the highest casualty of producing strike
Speaker 2: was one that happened while I was there, twenty nine
Speaker 2: internal security forces. Sometimes you'll see it translated as police,
Speaker 2: but I don't think that's quite accurate, like that they
Speaker 2: don't do cop shit, Like they're not there to you know,
Speaker 2: like arrescue for parking in the wrong place, or and
Speaker 2: they do the things that cops do. They're there largely
Speaker 2: as like internal security to the various non state armed
Speaker 2: groups that are in the area and state armed groups.
Speaker 2: I guess that they're operating in the area that would
Speaker 2: make things dangerous for people living there. So these particular
Speaker 2: essays were anti narcotics essays. And again why I'm grounding
Speaker 2: this and what they do is because they're not the
Speaker 2: people who like send you to jail for the rest
Speaker 2: of your life for like having an ounce of weed.
Speaker 2: They're the people whose job is to prevent the trading
Speaker 2: cap to gone will people know what people know what
Speaker 2: captagon is.
Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah, it's it's it's it's one of the drug
Speaker 3: I mean, it's that when you when you hear about
Speaker 3: drug interdiction forces, like like police in Rojava, they're going
Speaker 3: after CAPTI Gone. It's a big chunk of both what
Speaker 3: kept isis it's it's the it's the purveten, you know,
Speaker 3: the meth that Nazis took that for isis right, and
Speaker 3: it was also a big chunk of how they got
Speaker 3: their funding was was moving and the a sad regime
Speaker 3: also gets a piece of a lot of the captivegone trade.
Speaker 2: It continues to fund these largely these like it's the
Speaker 2: mist insurgent groups right in the area because it's small
Speaker 2: and it high value, and like Roberts also to give
Speaker 2: it to their fighters. This is very common, like around
Speaker 2: the world, We discuss this in Miandmar too, right, that
Speaker 2: the military there take something else called yabba. But these
Speaker 2: kind of meth derivatives are very common and they're very
Speaker 2: commonly sold. That's how a lot of these non state
Speaker 2: armed groups get money to buy stuff. Right. So when
Speaker 2: we're talking about drug interdiction, it's not done in a vacuum.
Speaker 2: It's not done because they think that necessarily that drugs
Speaker 2: are bad or that you know, there's some kind of
Speaker 2: moral failure that comes from the use of these substances.
Speaker 2: It's because it allows funding for groups that are trying
Speaker 2: to kill people on the ground. So like interdicting the
Speaker 2: drugs is part of an anti terrorism operation that allows
Speaker 2: people to live safely, which is what they deserve after
Speaker 2: ten plus years of war in that area. So twenty
Speaker 2: nine people is a lot of people, right, twenty nine
Speaker 2: anti narcotics assay issues is a lot of the people
Speaker 2: who do that job. It's going to make it signific
Speaker 2: currently harder for them to continue doing that job, which
Speaker 2: means it's going to make it significantly easier for those
Speaker 2: armed groups to get funding. Right. It's also so while
Speaker 2: I was there, there was a massive funeral for these
Speaker 2: people right, every town, every settlement across where Java has
Speaker 2: lost somebody in that strike, right, So in Kambishloh, in Kabani,
Speaker 2: in Alhasaka, like all these places had big funerals because
Speaker 2: you know, three or four or ten people came from
Speaker 2: that town, and like that's I saw a little girl
Speaker 2: like going to her dad's funeral, right, like a little
Speaker 2: girl holding a picture of her dad. And it's pretty
Speaker 2: fucked up. Like it's hard for that not to affect you,
Speaker 2: especially as like these people weren't fighting anyone, they weren't
Speaker 2: attacking anyone, right, they were just they were taking a training.
Speaker 2: They were taking an anti narcotics training at night, and
Speaker 2: sixty of them were gathering. It's building. Twenty nine were killed,
Speaker 2: twenty eight rain injured. And it's in the sort of
Speaker 2: furthest northeast part of northern Eassyria, but around a town
Speaker 2: called Derek, which is on the board of at al Malkay. Derek. Yeah,
Speaker 2: probably my pronunciation is asked al Malachaia might say on
Speaker 2: the map if you're looking at a Google map, so
Speaker 2: you're trying to work out what it is. Lots of
Speaker 2: these places. The reason they will have two names is
Speaker 2: cored edition and Arabic.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So, like under the previous Sad regime, like Arabic was
Speaker 2: the sort of language that people were enforced to speak
Speaker 2: and use, and now under the self administration, people tend
Speaker 2: to use Kurdish, and they tend to use a Latin
Speaker 2: script as opposed to an Arabic script. Right, So that's
Speaker 2: why you'll see two names very often you're looking on
Speaker 2: a map, But like twenty nine is only you know,
Speaker 2: there's nineteen other people, mostly civilians, right, who were killed,
Speaker 2: and two million people are now living without power, without
Speaker 2: water and without these basic services, which in turn will
Speaker 2: result in more death. Right, more people will die because
Speaker 2: they don't have access to those things which are life sustaining, right,
Speaker 2: old people, young people, sick people. Both things are the
Speaker 2: very basics of sustaining human life, and so without them,
Speaker 2: things are going to get a lot harder. I want
Speaker 2: to talk a little bit about like where these drone
Speaker 2: strikes happened, because largely aside from the one of their age,
Speaker 2: they weren't at like large groups of people or buildings. Instead,
Speaker 2: they were like deliberately targeting infrastructure. So of the ones
Speaker 2: that I saw and the ones that I read about,
Speaker 2: they targeted like an electricity substation in one case, they
Speaker 2: targeted a lot of water facilities, right, like water pumping stations,
Speaker 2: et cetera, that allow people to get water, a cooking
Speaker 2: gas plant, which it's pretty obvious what that does, right,
Speaker 2: It allows people to get bottles of gas to cook
Speaker 2: their food, and a lot of oil in destructures. So
Speaker 2: I saw a few of those called like donkeys, you know,
Speaker 2: the things that go up and down, yeah, using.
Speaker 5: I don't know the word, but the little crane things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the like the the things you can
Speaker 2: see if you drive through Bakersfield.
Speaker 5: I'm sure there's a name.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Are they oiled derricks? Yeah? Someone someone googled the
Speaker 2: name of the nodding dog they pumps jack?
Speaker 5: Is that no?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the first sounds like like a dude
Speaker 2: who goes to the gym a lot, Yeah, broke and
Speaker 2: pump jecked.
Speaker 5: I mean it is called the an oil donkey as well.
Speaker 5: So you were, yeah, nodding donkey pumps. Yeah's thought they
Speaker 5: were noding donkeys. Okay, yeah, that's that's that's a phrase
Speaker 5: we're going with. So you could see a lot of
Speaker 5: these that were like knocked over on their side, right
Speaker 5: that had been drawn struck, and then you could see
Speaker 5: others that were just knocked out because the power to
Speaker 5: them had been knocked out. So obviously that's not only
Speaker 5: a major revenue source, but also like that is how
Speaker 5: people in the region get fuel, right, so like it's
Speaker 5: going to be harder for them to get diesels, going
Speaker 5: to be harder for them to drive around. People already
Speaker 5: don't drive around a lot because a lot of the
Speaker 5: drone strikes on people in the Yepagay Yepja, so that
Speaker 5: the People's Defense Forces and Women's Defense Forces, lots of
Speaker 5: drun strikes have happened when those people are driving their cars.
Speaker 5: When they get in a car, so it can be
Speaker 5: quite hairy driving. And so a lot of people were
Speaker 5: driving to like I drive around, but that's just one
Speaker 5: of the areas of risk for people.
Speaker 2: Right. Of the people killed, thirty fives a eleven were
Speaker 2: civilians and two SEFs, So most of these were either
Speaker 2: internal security or civilians. And I think Robert you were
Speaker 2: Robert and I spoke well while I was there, and
Speaker 2: Robert made a good point about how this like enables
Speaker 2: these non state armed groups like either ISIS or like.
Speaker 3: HID that My main concern for you while you were
Speaker 3: there was not the you would get hit in an
Speaker 3: air strike, but it was that because of the damage
Speaker 3: done to the security forces as a result of the
Speaker 3: Turkish are strikes, you would it would, it would. There's
Speaker 3: there's always been is as cells there right that they're
Speaker 3: they're they've never gotten rid of all of them. And
Speaker 3: periods where the A and E. S self administration is
Speaker 3: under attack are the periods in which it's most dangerous
Speaker 3: because it provides there's less security forces, you know, watching everything.
Speaker 3: People in general are are outless, which provides cover for
Speaker 3: for some of these groups that may want to do
Speaker 3: like a kidnapping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's not a place where a
Speaker 2: lot of I guess folks who look like memory. That
Speaker 2: was a concern for us, and like it's a concern
Speaker 2: for these people too. Write they still do car bombs
Speaker 2: in derizor not, you know that they think still kill civilians. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they roll up IIS people on a probably weekly basis,
Speaker 2: and people are interested in getting more information both the
Speaker 2: drone strikes and about what they call sleeper cells. The
Speaker 2: Java Information Center very nice people. They have a good website.
Speaker 2: It's Jarva Information Center Org, which they produce monthly reports
Speaker 2: on both things, so that will give more information on
Speaker 2: those things. That would be a good time to pivot
Speaker 2: to adverts. But I've got all that is. Do you
Speaker 2: know who else provides great services? I don't think we can.
Speaker 2: I don't reasonably make that claim.
Speaker 4: The products and services that support this podcast here they are.
Speaker 2: We're back and we are discussing torone strikes North Asyria,
Speaker 2: I guess not just from North Asyria, like these also
Speaker 2: happen up around Slimani sort of many if you're looking
Speaker 2: on the map, depends again on the language. Right, those
Speaker 2: have happened again against KSEK, which is like the Kurdistan
Speaker 2: Communities Council, So that would be the I guess the
Speaker 2: the that if you look at like Syria, Iran, Turkey
Speaker 2: and Iraq as different countries, all of which have some
Speaker 2: administrative control over the nation of Kurdish people, right, Kurdish
Speaker 2: people live in all four countries, and they live in
Speaker 2: other countries too. Of course, then the movements in each
Speaker 2: of those countries are subsidiary to the k c K,
Speaker 2: and so some of those KTK folks are up in Solimani.
Speaker 2: So like that there will be drowne strikes there, and
Speaker 2: that's that's far inside Iraqi Kurdistan. Right, You're you're a
Speaker 2: long way from the border there, and that's that's what
Speaker 2: these drone strikes. I guess. The drone strikes allow Turkish
Speaker 2: intelligence in the Turkish military to target people much much
Speaker 2: further inside with with a little consequent or risk on
Speaker 2: their own. Right, these drones are largely not being targeted because,
Speaker 2: certainly in an Ees, the Autonomous Administration in North Eastyria,
Speaker 2: they don't have the means to target them, right. The
Speaker 2: United States hasn't supplied them with the weapons that they
Speaker 2: would need to shoot down those drones, which I think
Speaker 2: brings me onto the role of the US in this
Speaker 2: and I guess, more broadly, the role of the coalition
Speaker 2: in this case. Coalition is a coalition to defeat ISIS. Right,
Speaker 2: it's made up of dozens of countries, the UK, the US, Germany,
Speaker 2: lots of other Western I guess countries broadly, and countries
Speaker 2: in that part of the world too, like I think
Speaker 2: Iraq is part of it. Certainly, like Iraqi, Kurdistan has
Speaker 2: done their own operations against ISIS sleeper cells, peshmurger and
Speaker 2: like everywhere you go you go through pesh mega checkpoints.
Speaker 2: Like I was going through an area where they had
Speaker 2: arrested and isis member the day before, So like it's
Speaker 2: they'll be getting you out of the car, you know,
Speaker 2: going through your bags, looking through your stuff. Right, So
Speaker 2: that's all part of the same operation. But the US
Speaker 2: has a base in a place called Alhassaka, which again
Speaker 2: you can look up on the map, right, it's a
Speaker 2: little west. I'm trying to land up my compass here,
Speaker 2: a little west of Camishlo, which is a capital of
Speaker 2: the region, and the US pretty much US troops don't
Speaker 2: do a great amount of leaving that base. It's fair
Speaker 2: to say they'll come out in helicopters. They were going
Speaker 2: out like sort of supporting SDF patrols in the Ahaska region,
Speaker 2: but they were supporting them from the air.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: They generally aren't going out and about like with people
Speaker 2: on the ground, talking to people unless it's a specific mission,
Speaker 2: which they do sometimes you can if people are interested
Speaker 2: in like the US presence. It's called Operation Inherent Resolve,
Speaker 2: And they have a Twitter account whether sometimes post themselves
Speaker 2: doing things. But what they don't do is protect that
Speaker 2: and So the US and the Autonomous Administration are allies
Speaker 2: in this fight against ISIS, right, but they are only
Speaker 2: allied in this fight against ISIS. The US is not
Speaker 2: supporting them in defending themselves from drone strikes or like
Speaker 2: ensuring that a civilian population is protected from those attacks.
Speaker 2: So the US has the capacity to shoot down these drones,
Speaker 2: and they prove that by shooting one down last week
Speaker 2: or the week before. I'm a little bit jet lagged,
Speaker 2: a bit bangledo on time, but I think it was
Speaker 2: last week the US shut down a Turkish drones that
Speaker 2: came out two weeks ago for when this is airing, Yes, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: good point. Yeah. So yeah, two weeks ago the United
Speaker 2: States shut down and F sixteen shut down a Turkish drone.
Speaker 2: So specifically, it was a drone called an a Kinji,
Speaker 2: which is a newer variant of the Bairaktar drone. We've
Speaker 2: spoken about these drones before, right, they're the drones that
Speaker 2: people like, I know, you can go on actually by
Speaker 2: a stuffy version of these drones, which rights that's concerning.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's really dystopian and crazy.
Speaker 2: I don't like it. Yeah, I do not like it either.
Speaker 2: I think it illustrates the way the war in Ukraine
Speaker 2: has become like a football match for some people, yeah yes,
Speaker 2: or like a film where like I just want to
Speaker 2: reinforce it.
Speaker 4: Like it's turned into like fandom.
Speaker 2: Yeah yes, yeah, I think that's an excellent way of
Speaker 2: putting it. Garasay, Like, it's not cool when anyone gets
Speaker 2: fucking drone struck. It's not cool when like everyone in
Speaker 2: an area spends every night worrying if death is going
Speaker 2: to come from the sky at some point, right Like,
Speaker 2: the effect of these drones trucks isn't just on the
Speaker 2: people killed, or the people injured, or even the infrastructure.
Speaker 2: The effect is on every single person worrying what's going
Speaker 2: to happen tonight? Right Like, And I can speak to
Speaker 2: a tiny part of that experience. Right Nothing compared to
Speaker 2: what people are living there have gone through at all,
Speaker 2: But it's a concern every time it gets dark, you know,
Speaker 2: well it it's tonight then, I especially for the rural
Speaker 2: folks who might be living in a rural area but
Speaker 2: near to a substation, or near to one of those
Speaker 2: nodding donkeys or other infrastructure which has been targeted, or
Speaker 2: near a cooking gas plant, right those things I can
Speaker 2: imagine explode with quite some force. They can't leave, right,
Speaker 2: they can't just up and and not live near any infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Infrastructures what allows the place to be survivable for civilians.
Speaker 2: So they just have to live with this constant fear.
Speaker 2: And it's very odd to see that and then simultaneously
Speaker 2: see this this sort of deification of drone strikes that
Speaker 2: are happening in Ukraine and like this, you know, people
Speaker 2: with dog dressed as Napoleon Twitter avatars, Yeah, cheering someone's
Speaker 2: kid dying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean throughout all of the kind of new
Speaker 4: conflicts we've had the past five years, like the and
Speaker 4: especially the past like two three years, Like the idea
Speaker 4: of like politics as fandom has produced some of the
Speaker 4: like most like inhumane, gross aspects of how people have
Speaker 4: been like consuming social media and just the sheer. It's
Speaker 4: like people forget that this is like thousands of people's actual,
Speaker 4: like human lives that they're like meaming about, and it's
Speaker 4: it just it just becomes just they talk about it
Speaker 4: in the same way they talk about like a Marvel
Speaker 4: movie or like a star sport like it's it's it's yeah,
Speaker 4: or sports like it's it it it it's like this
Speaker 4: weird like gamified. It allows you to to approach these
Speaker 4: things from a just a from a very separate perspective
Speaker 4: when you're when you're viewing it from like this fandom angle,
Speaker 4: I think. But politics is fandom in general. I think
Speaker 4: it's gotten a whole lot worse since the Trump era,
Speaker 4: YE had, you know, like that's where we had like
Speaker 4: resistance libs that were like copying off some of the
Speaker 4: stuff from the New Star Wars trilogy, which is kind
Speaker 4: of the inspiration for a lot of their stuff. We
Speaker 4: got Nazis doing a whole bunch of politics as fandom
Speaker 4: as well. It just creates like it's it's it's like
Speaker 4: this team sports like fandom thing that is just pervate.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's it's seeped into like almost every single
Speaker 4: aspect of like not just politics, but now like conflict
Speaker 4: and like geopolitics.
Speaker 5: It's like whoever has the best branding is the one
Speaker 5: that has the best chance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's I don't know, it's it's it's disturbing
Speaker 2: to watch.
Speaker 4: I I don't know how to like counter counter it,
Speaker 4: because it feels like the more you engage the further
Speaker 4: sucked into the abyss you become. But it also doesn't
Speaker 4: feel good to just like ignore it as well, because
Speaker 4: it's just it's like, it feels like this kind of
Speaker 4: endless trap that is just a part of existing in
Speaker 4: this weird postmodern internet world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I think like one would hope
Speaker 2: that the Internet in some ways could help us see that,
Speaker 2: like at the end of every drone strikes a little
Speaker 2: fucking child most of the time, or like like I
Speaker 2: spent some time last week with the family who almost
Speaker 2: exactly one year ago lost their fifteen year old turn
Speaker 2: in a drone strike, and like it that, Like I
Speaker 2: understand people die in these things, like on an intellectual
Speaker 2: level and even on a personal level, like having spent
Speaker 2: time in these places for a decent amount of my life,
Speaker 2: But fuck me, it's just like it destroyed you. Like
Speaker 2: seeing a mum bury her son cry for her little boy.
Speaker 2: It's fucking heartbreaking, and like I got to live that
Speaker 2: for one morning, and those people live that every single
Speaker 2: day and every time, like and I don't, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it makes me want to shout at people when I
Speaker 2: see this.
Speaker 3: I don't actually think it's I don't mean to be
Speaker 3: a doomer here. I don't think it's a solvable problem. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is we are talking about it within the language
Speaker 3: of fandom because that is kind of the defining public
Speaker 3: social relationship of our time. But like this is always
Speaker 3: what people have done to watch, sure one way or
Speaker 3: the other. Right, Yeah, it's faster now and and more commercial, right,
Speaker 3: like one thing for whatever reason, I think just because
Speaker 3: we're a culturated to it. Hearing people talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: doing what they do in times of war because of patriotism,
Speaker 3: because of nationalism, because of belief in the founding principles
Speaker 3: of their country, seems a little bit less coarse than
Speaker 3: like doing it because you fell in with a bunch
Speaker 3: of memers who use little dog avatars and shit. But like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's it's not like less logical than yeah,
Speaker 3: being right or die, because like you happen to be
Speaker 3: born under you know so and so the king.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, and like that dehumanization. I think the difference,
Speaker 2: like to me is like so like Robert and I
Speaker 2: have bose experiences, right to in order to kill somebody,
Speaker 2: you have to dehumanize them. To kill people on mass
Speaker 2: you have to do that on mass right, if you're
Speaker 2: fighting a war, it doesn't behoove you to make it
Speaker 2: sound like we're killing people.
Speaker 4: Ge.
Speaker 2: Well that's the thing that we do on the podcast, Robert, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we kill people in maths.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, you're going to have to school. A zone
Speaker 2: is where we talk about the killings. If people want
Speaker 2: to subscribe, that's what we do instead of adverts, is
Speaker 2: we list the people we've killed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, James as the as the quote on your Blue
Speaker 3: Sky account says, one death is a tragedy, one million
Speaker 3: is a statistic James Stout.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right, and it's every every day I
Speaker 2: strive to get my number up, you know, but so
Speaker 2: far I've let everyone down. That's not true. And to
Speaker 2: my knowledge, none of us have killed anyone but your knowledge,
Speaker 2: to my knowledge, yeah, Sharen's probably got some bodies in
Speaker 2: the in the class, you know, Jesus Christ. It's so
Speaker 2: what I want to to say is that like when yeah,
Speaker 2: like if you're in the military, you probably know this, right,
Speaker 2: like like this sort of blood makes a grass grows, shit, fine, whatever,
Speaker 2: Like that's how wars work. War is undesirable, it's horrible.
Speaker 2: You have to be horrible. You have to you have
Speaker 2: to dehumanize people to kill them. You don't have to
Speaker 2: fucking do that if you're on Twitter dot com. But
Speaker 2: like people, you know, people with the silly dog advatars chiefly,
Speaker 2: but other people to have begun to see themselves as
Speaker 2: like participants in conflict in a way that they maybe didn't.
Speaker 2: Maybe they did and I just wasn't around in the
Speaker 2: second world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I think I think that does tie into
Speaker 4: part of how the fandom things works, because a part
Speaker 4: of participating in fandom is being in these kind of
Speaker 4: very very alienating online spaces. Because any type of like
Speaker 4: engagement on the Internet in this way is fuel through
Speaker 4: the process of alienation. But when that kind of starts
Speaker 4: applying to politics, you feel like either the act of
Speaker 4: consuming or or like you know, joining in on conversation
Speaker 4: is itself like a form of activism. By just like
Speaker 4: just through like a consuming or sharing content, you feel
Speaker 4: like you're actually participating in the thing itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think some of it's this almost narcissistic
Speaker 3: need to not let the world pass you by because
Speaker 3: it's there. There's something deeply uncomfortable about just like watching
Speaker 3: massive things happen and realizing like there's nothing I can
Speaker 3: do about this. Yeah, to feel there isn't a lot
Speaker 3: of the time, right, like your your take, you know,
Speaker 3: the the instant a hospital gets attacked in Gaza, your
Speaker 3: your take on that is is not particularly helpful or
Speaker 3: necessary unless your I don't know Joe Biden, right, but
Speaker 3: which is not. I don't think his take was helpful,
Speaker 3: but right, it was like it had an impact because
Speaker 3: he's the president, but like most of us were just
Speaker 3: kind of part of the churn, And there's almost there's
Speaker 3: like a degree of emotional need to it, especially when
Speaker 3: you see these horrible footage of bodies piled high. Right,
Speaker 3: you feel like I'm a bad person if I don't
Speaker 3: do something, and the only thing I can do is
Speaker 3: tweet or whatever your social.
Speaker 5: Media, I feel like I just just to play Devil's
Speaker 5: advocate for hot sake. I think it's a little different
Speaker 5: when there's so much conflicting information, especially I mean, like
Speaker 5: the Gaza think is a great example. Because the electricity
Speaker 5: is out, they don't want them to share anything. So
Speaker 5: I think when it comes to something like that, it's
Speaker 5: more about like spreading awareness versus like having a take.
Speaker 5: In my opinion. It's more just like, hey, the news
Speaker 5: might say this, but this is from the actual person
Speaker 5: on the ground telling you what's happening. So I think
Speaker 5: there's a little bit of nuance because I also think
Speaker 5: the only reason that like, like just for Palestine for example,
Speaker 5: just is we don't have to go into it too much.
Speaker 5: But a huge reason why there's so much more support
Speaker 5: for the Palestinian movement is because of social media.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so definitely, Yeah, people see people in gods are
Speaker 2: as people now, not as statistics or just through the
Speaker 2: lens of hamas or whatever.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, yeah, I mean it depends. I think it
Speaker 3: depends on how you do it. And like, I mean,
Speaker 3: it is it is accurate to say that to a
Speaker 3: significant extent, the ultimate outcome of these conflicts are determined
Speaker 3: in large part due to public sympathy, right Like, That's
Speaker 3: going to be probably true of, however, things that ultimately
Speaker 3: shake out in Gaza, And it's certainly been true of
Speaker 3: the conflict in Ukraine, right Like, the degree to which
Speaker 3: weapons keep flowing to that country is going to be
Speaker 3: heavily based on the degree to which sympathy for that
Speaker 3: cause remains among US tax payers and taxpayers in other
Speaker 3: countries that are sending them those weapons. That's going to
Speaker 3: have an impact on the presidential election maybe, I mean
Speaker 3: that is the other thing, right that, like everyone who
Speaker 3: is engaging with this stuff via social media, the a
Speaker 3: tendency to get caught up in a bubble in terms
Speaker 3: of just thinking about how much this is on the
Speaker 3: mind of like American voters. Maybe it'll be different this election,
Speaker 3: but generally, like again, my feelings on this are kind
Speaker 3: of muddle, but like very very often, no matter how
Speaker 3: big a deal a story is, you know, online and stuff,
Speaker 3: American voters rarely vote based on foreign policy concerns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tends to be elections, I want to say. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that's what matters morally. I'm just talking about,
Speaker 2: like you're totally correct. Yeah, yeah, and especially in terms
Speaker 2: of your ability to influence something, it doesn't matter how
Speaker 2: much other people don't. An election time, I want to
Speaker 2: maybe finish up. I've just knocked over bottle of os
Speaker 2: of procol alcohols. My office is rapidly becoming yourself. That's
Speaker 2: why I went to turn on the fan and open
Speaker 2: the door. Good times. So maybe I want to finish
Speaker 2: up before I evacuate by saying that that it's something
Speaker 2: you can do, and like it's to give your time
Speaker 2: and money. I know that doesn't feel as good as like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to do amateur ocin on Reddit. But
Speaker 2: you can help, actually, like and you can make a
Speaker 2: meaningful difference with a few bucks. And I know I
Speaker 2: sound like an NPR advert now, but like the rajarv
Speaker 2: of Information Center has some good resources, and like they
Speaker 2: they have, I'm not going to read them because it's
Speaker 2: very complicated, like I say, it's bank transfer information. But
Speaker 2: if you feel helpless, you are not, Like you can
Speaker 2: do a lot with a little. You can raise money,
Speaker 2: you can help to organize donations, right that, Like these
Speaker 2: things make a difference. If someone who doesn't have water
Speaker 2: now gets a palette of bottled water, that makes a difference.
Speaker 2: If someone gets a heater for their home, that makes
Speaker 2: a difference. If even if it's someone whose kid has died,
Speaker 2: right like, making their life a little less painful in
Speaker 2: a physical sense, rightly helping them be warm at night,
Speaker 2: that does make a difference. And you can do that.
Speaker 2: And if you want to make a difference, I would
Speaker 2: really encourage you to do whatever it is, and it
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be here, right, it's had that like that,
Speaker 2: Like there's an ethnic cleansing happening in Azerbijan, there is
Speaker 2: an ethnic cleansing happening in Gaza, right, Like these are
Speaker 2: places where like you can show meaningful solidarity and support
Speaker 2: with a little bit of a donation or a fundraiser. Right,
Speaker 2: it's happening at our fucking border, right, Like someone died
Speaker 2: at our border since I last recording. Someone else got
Speaker 2: run over by some chat in the truck. Like, you
Speaker 2: can make a difference in a meaningful way with actions,
Speaker 2: And it's really easy to get sucked into like just
Speaker 2: posting into the void and feeling helpless. But like there
Speaker 2: are helpful things you can.
Speaker 4: Do and yeah, yeah, and you don't have to just
Speaker 4: you don't have to be like rich or have a
Speaker 4: lot of disposable income to do this. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of like traditionally anarchist communities have put on benefit shows
Speaker 4: to run to fundraise from an entire community. So that's
Speaker 4: not just you trying to you know, you know, put
Speaker 4: like your few pennies aside. There's there's ways, there's ways
Speaker 4: to do this that just involve you actually like getting
Speaker 4: involved with your like local culture, and a part of
Speaker 4: that is like it's not politics as fandom, it is metapolitics.
Speaker 4: It's where you actually put your politics into your into
Speaker 4: your actual everyday life and it influences the friends you have,
Speaker 4: the communities you have. So whether that's you know, a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of trans musicians doing a benefit show to
Speaker 4: get donations to send over to Rajava or send over
Speaker 4: to to Gaza, or you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 4: other sorts of things that that is a way of
Speaker 4: actually having part of your politics be not just like
Speaker 4: consumption have not it's not just like Twitter accounts with
Speaker 4: flags and your avatar. It's actually like living your life
Speaker 4: in a way that matches the things that you believe.
Speaker 2: And I think that that like, sorry, having spoken to
Speaker 2: people in more Java, in the Yepigay and the Yepijay
Speaker 2: and these other organizations, Like one of the things that
Speaker 2: makes them distinct from other militaries is that they are
Speaker 2: building the well they want to see. They're fighting against
Speaker 2: the thing that's killing it right like they're destroying it.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of times we'll see leftist military is
Speaker 2: not exactly doing the equality that leftism is about. One hopes.
Speaker 2: So like you can participate in that, as Garrison said, right,
Speaker 2: by doing the mutual aid, by doing the benefit, sure,
Speaker 2: by doing the fundraiser, Like you are making a world
Speaker 2: in which this shit will happen less when you do
Speaker 2: things to stop it happening or to ease the pain
Speaker 2: of it happening. Now. So and you're building communities, right
Speaker 2: and in strong communities are more resilient to this shit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And like things are getting pretty bleak and we're only
Speaker 2: going to get through them by helping each other and
Speaker 2: so building a network that continue. Like if I think
Speaker 2: about how much better the mutual aid response has been
Speaker 2: this time to what's happened at the border compared to
Speaker 2: what it was in May, that's because people built networks
Speaker 2: didn't go away, and it was good in May in
Speaker 2: part because we built networks that help to make being
Speaker 2: on housed in San Diego feel be survivable. Right, And
Speaker 2: like those networks to resilient and they're flexible that they
Speaker 2: and they help us like mentally process all the horrible
Speaker 2: shit and also physically help people. So yeah, you have
Speaker 2: that within your means too, Right, you have a signal
Speaker 2: on your telephone, like you can organize things. I don't
Speaker 2: have to feel helpless, but I feel dizzy due to
Speaker 2: the I suprise but alcoholic that has feeled. So maybe
Speaker 2: that's a wonderful time to end the All right, everyone,
Speaker 2: James is going to hallucinate in his office, and you,
Speaker 2: I hope, are going to hallucinate wherever you happen to
Speaker 2: be right now. Enjoy the better world. Hallucinate the better world.
Speaker 2: It might be the only way to live through one
Speaker 2: wonderful podcast. To Garrison Davis's everyone, Hi, it's me James.
Speaker 2: You thought I died, but I have not. I survived
Speaker 2: the uproble alcohol fumes. I wouldn't advise doing that to yourself.
Speaker 2: Very unpleasant, But I'm back just to update you. We
Speaker 2: recorded that last week and I am recording this today
Speaker 2: before this goes out. So I'm recording this on the
Speaker 2: afternoon of Monday, the twenty third of October. I just
Speaker 2: wanted to update everyone. As Robert mentioned in the show,
Speaker 2: the weakening of the Sae Shrint and the fact that
Speaker 2: people are not able to be out and about because
Speaker 2: of these drones strikes, combined with the events in Israel
Speaker 2: and Palestine in the last couple of weeks, have resulted
Speaker 2: in a significant uptake in violence in the area. So
Speaker 2: I just wanted to update you on that, especially as
Speaker 2: I've seen a decent amount of misinformation which will be
Speaker 2: shocking to many of you on Twitter dot com. So
Speaker 2: there have been a series of rocket and uav UV
Speaker 2: and manned aerial vehicle right drones drone attacks on US
Speaker 2: bases across the north of Iraq and across Syria. So
Speaker 2: some of those happened to Altant, which is further south.
Speaker 2: Some of them happened to Al Hassaka. Some of them
Speaker 2: also happened to oil pipelines. And I would be very
Speaker 2: wary of people posting, which is are big fires and
Speaker 2: claiming that there are attacks at the US Bass. Every
Speaker 2: time I've seen that, it's actually been an attack on
Speaker 2: an oil pipeline, and either the person doesn't know that
Speaker 2: that's not a US base or they are willfully being
Speaker 2: leading to try and get more clicks. People get paid
Speaker 2: on Twitter for engagement now, so I'm quite cynical about
Speaker 2: people's reasons for doing that. But there definitely have been
Speaker 2: attacks that they have not resulted in much loss of life.
Speaker 2: One contractor I believe did lose their lives due to
Speaker 2: Carliac incident that happened when they were sheltering from a
Speaker 2: what turned out to be a false alarm of a
Speaker 2: drone attack, but no one has been directly killed by
Speaker 2: those drone munitions. There have been a number of people
Speaker 2: killed in increasing conflict in the area. Both One person
Speaker 2: was killed in Camishlow, very very close to where I stayed.
Speaker 2: Actually you can probably see it from my outolium in
Speaker 2: a car bomb, which is not a normal thing to
Speaker 2: happen in the middle of that city, a car bomb
Speaker 2: going off, So that's obviously cosst for concern for some
Speaker 2: people in Deir rezor SDF and coalition forces have conducted
Speaker 2: a number of operations against ISIS sleeper cells who are
Speaker 2: still there, arrested, obtained a number of suspected ISIS members.
Speaker 2: They've also been fighting against Iranian backed militias across the Euphrates.
Speaker 2: We've also seen fighting between the Peshmerger so that those
Speaker 2: are the military forces of the Kurdis down regional government
Speaker 2: in that area of Iraq and the Iraqi Army around
Speaker 2: the Macmaal refugee camp, which is a refugee camp for
Speaker 2: Kurdish people who have fled from Turkey, and of course
Speaker 2: we've seen a lot of threats, a lot of even
Speaker 2: fighting inside Iran, but it it's generally been an Iranian
Speaker 2: backed militias attacking US bases so far across that whole area.
Speaker 2: So I just wanted to update you on those things.
Speaker 2: Obviously we'll keep updating you on them, and also to
Speaker 2: just suggest once again that people verify the sources of
Speaker 2: information because I have seen, especially about this area where
Speaker 2: I think literacy is really among the general US populations,
Speaker 2: and outrageous claims being made by people who either don't
Speaker 2: know what they're talking about or are wilfully misleading people.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to counsel people to be concerned about that.
Speaker 2: We don't have exact I don't have exact numbers of
Speaker 2: the numbers of drone attacks. I'm looking at a Pentagon
Speaker 2: press conference that happened thirty nine minutes ago, and they're
Speaker 2: not giving them out there. So I have asked them
Speaker 2: for comment on a couple of things. So didn't email
Speaker 2: me back, very sad ghosting me a bit. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the latest information on that. I wanted to make sure
Speaker 2: that we had the leaders update for you.
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